A liquid crystal display (LCD) is an element displaying letters and images utilizing electrooptic properties of liquid crystal molecules and is widely used in mobile phones, notebook PCs, liquid crystal display TVs, and the like. In recent years, LCDs have come to achieve higher and higher resolution and cover a broad range of applications. Accompanying these, an improvement in display quality such as improving a contrast ratio, widening a viewing angle, or the like is demanded. The contrast ratio “YW/YB” is calculated based on a Y value (white luminance: YW) in a white image and a Y value (black luminance: YB) in a black image, for example. That is, the improving a contrast ratio is achieved by at least one of an increase in white luminance and a reduction in black luminance.
In order to satisfy the above-mentioned demand of the improvement in display quality, for example, a liquid crystal display including: a liquid crystal panel that includes a liquid crystal cell, a polarizing section, an anisotropic optical element, and a light diffusion section; and a light source device including a surface light source and a light-gathering layer (for example, a louver) has been proposed (for example, see Patent Document 1 (paragraph [0032], FIG. 11), Patent Document 2). In this liquid crystal display, the light-gathering layer (for example, a louver) has a function of bringing diffused light from the surface light source close to parallel light. Moreover, for example, a liquid crystal display including a vertical alignment mode liquid crystal cell, i.e., VA (Vertical Aligned) mode liquid crystal cell as a liquid crystal cell, a plurality of retardation films, and a polarizing plate, in which the plurality of retardation films are arranged between the liquid crystal cell and the polarizing plate, has been proposed (see Patent Document 3). It is considered that when the liquid crystal display including the VA mode liquid crystal cell is viewed from the front direction, an almost perfect black display can be provided, and thus, the contrast ratio is high.